The Anarchistic Method. 311 



your cow more than I want my own horse and you want 

 my horse more than you want your own cow we exchange 

 beasts. We each, by the trade, gain something, but neither 

 makes a "profit." Profit is not as easily separable from 

 wages as interest or rent, because what is called wages of 

 superintendence is an uncertain quantity ; but it may be, 

 nevertheless, accurately defined as that portion of the 

 manufacturer's or merchant's income over and above what 

 he should receive as compensation for labor actually per- 

 formed by him. And Anarchists believe that if the land 

 and money monopolies were broken, profits would dis- 

 appear. This needs further explanation, but the limits of 

 this address do not admit of it. I must leave it for your 

 future reflection or study, if you are not already familiar 

 with the line of thought involved. 



Anarchists believe, then, that poverty results from the 

 existence of social parasites persons who perform no 

 productive labor and who are therefore, necessarily, sup- 

 ported out of what laborers produce. These social para- 

 sites are thieves at liberty, criminals in prison, gamblers, 

 whether with cards, dice or stocks ; sharpers, whether 

 confidence-men or business-men ; paupers, whether abroad 

 or in poor-houses ; policemen, when in excess of actual 

 need for the protection of property and life ; soldiers, 

 unless actually necessary to repel invasion ; collectors of 

 compulsory taxes ; politicians and law-makers, unless we 

 are to reject the time-honored belief of many of the wisest 

 and best of men that government by force is, at best, a 

 "necessary evil"; rent-takers, interest-takers and profit- 

 takers, except in so far as it can be scientifically proven 

 that rent, interest and profits are the necessary outcome of 

 absolutely free contracts between persons as free as indi- 

 viduals ever can be under any possible arrangement of 

 society. 



In my opinion, the most thoughtful Anarchists are 

 agreed that, in any possible arrangement of society, sporadic 

 cases of rent, interest and profits might arise, but the 

 amounts involved would be too insignificant for serious 

 consideration and the transactions would represent no 

 injustice whatever. But as all these social parasites are 

 the products of a social arrangement that legitimates rent, 

 interest and profits. Anarchists believe that involuntary 

 poverty is the necessary outcome of, and is completely 



